and it is especially so after nightfall, when the streets are thronged with people until a late hour and the coffee-houses and open-air restaurants are in full swing. Long after the ordinary person has gone to bed, passing Athenians will be heard shouting or singing in merry bands of from three to a dozen, especially if it be election time. The Athenian takes his politics as he takes his coffee—in deliberate sips, making a little go a long way. The general election period usually extends over something like two weeks, during which time the blank walls of the city blossom with the portraits of candidates and the night is made vocal with the rallying cries of the free-born. “Rallying” carriages are employed much as our own practical politicians employ them, to convey the decrepit or the reluctant able-bodied voters to the polls, with the difference that the Athenian rallying conveyance is generally decorated with partisan banners and not infrequently bears on its box, beside the driver, a musical outfit consisting of a drum and penny whistle, with which imposing panoply the proud voter progresses grandly through the streets to the ballot box, attended by a shouting throng. Torchlight processions, which make up in noise for their lack of numbers, are common every night during the election. The Athenian, when he does make up his mind to shout for any aspirant, shouts with his whole being, and with a vigor that recalls the days of Stentor. Noisy enough at all times, Athens is more so than ever in days of political excitement or on high festivals—notably on the night before Easter, when the joy over the resurrection of the Lord is manifested in a whole-hearted outpouring of the spirit, finding vent in explosives, rockets, and other pyrotechnics. Religious anniversaries, such as the birthday of a saint, or the Nativity, or the final triumph of Jesus, are treated by the Greek with the same pomp and circumstance that we accord to the Fourth of July; and, indeed, the same is true of all Mediterranean countries. I have never experienced a night before Easter in Athens, but I have been told that this, one of the most sacred of the festivals of the Orthodox Church, is the one occasion when it is at all dangerous or disagreeable to be abroad in the streets of the capital, and it is so only because of the exuberant and genuine joy that the native feels in the thought of his salvation, the idea of which seems annually to be a perfectly new and hitherto unexpected one.
By day the chief tumult is from the ordinary press of traffic, with the unintelligible street-cries of itinerant peddlers offering fish, eggs, and divers vegetables, not to mention fire-wood. Nor should one omit the newsboys, for the Athenian has abandoned not a whit of his traditional eagerness to see or to hear some new thing, and has settled upon the daily paper as the best vehicle for purveying to that taste. Athens boasts perhaps half a dozen journals, fairly good though somewhat given to exaggeration, and it is a poor citizen indeed who does not read two or three of them as he drinks his coffee. Early morn and late evening are filled with the cries of the paper boys ringing clear and distinct over the general hubbub, and of all the street sounds their calls are by far the easiest to understand.
Most fascinating of all to the foreign visitor must always be the narrower and less ornate streets of the old quarter, leading off Hermes and Æolus streets, and paramount in attractiveness the little narrow lane of the red shoes, which is a perfect bazaar. It is a mere alley, lined from end to end with small open booths, or shops, and devoted almost exclusively to the sale of shoes, mostly of red leather and provided with red pompons, though soft, white leather boots are also to be had, and to the dealing in embroidered bags, coats, pouches, belts, and the like. The stock in trade of each is very similar to that of every neighbor, and the effect of the tout ensemble is highly curious and striking. To venture there once is to insure frequent visits, and one is absolutely certain sooner or later to buy. The wares seem rather Turkish than Greek in character. Of course, patience and tact are needful to enable one to avoid outrageous extortion. Nothing would surprise a shoe-lane dealer more, in all probability, than to find a foreigner willing and ready to accept his initial price as final. Chaffering is the order of the day, and after a sufficient amount of advancing and retreating, the intending purchaser is sure to succumb and return laden with souvenirs, from the inexpensive little embroidered bags to the coats heavy with gold lace, which are the festal gear of the peasant girls. The latter garments are mostly second-hand, and generally show the blemishes due to actual use. They are sleeveless over-garments made of heavy felt but gay with red and green cloth, on which, as a border, gold braid and tracery have been lavished without stint until they are splendid to see. Needless to say, they are the most expensive things in shoe lane. The process of bargaining between one who speaks no English and one who speaks no Greek is naturally largely a matter of dumb show, although the ever-ready pad and pencil figure in it. Madame looks inquiringly up from a handsome Greek coat, and is told by the pad that the price is 50 drachmas. Her face falls; she says as plainly as words could say it that she is very sorry, but it is out of the question. She turns and approaches the door. “Madame! madame!” She turns back, and the pad, bearing the legend 45, is shoved toward her. Again the retreat, and once more the summons to return and see a new and still lower price. Eventually the blank paper is passed to “madame,” and she writes thereon a price of her own—inevitably too low. Finally, however, the product of the extremes produces the Aristotelian golden mean, and the title passes. Indeed, it sometimes happens that the merchant will inform you of an outrageous price and add with shameless haste, “What will you give?” Experience will soon teach the purchaser that the easiest way to secure reasonable prices is to make a lump sum for several articles at a single sale.
Shoe lane, for all its narrowness and business, is far from squalid, and is remarkably clean and sweet. In this it differs from the market district farther along, where vegetables, lambs, pigs, chickens, and other viands are offered for sale. The sight is interesting, but its olfactory appeal is stronger than the ocular. One need not venture there, however, to see the wayside cook at his work of roasting a whole sheep on the curb. Even the business streets up-town often show this spectacle. The stove is a mere sheet-iron chest without a cover, and containing a slow fire of charcoal. Over this on an iron spit, which is thrust through the lamb from end to end, the roast is slowly turning, legs, ribs, head, eyes, and all, the motive power being a little boy. From this primitive establishment cooked meat may be bought, as in the days of Socrates, either to be taken home, or to be eaten in some corner by the Athenian quick-lunch devotee. Farther along in the old quarter, not far from the Monastiri Station of the Piræus Line, is the street of the coppersmiths, heralded from afar by the noise of its hammers. By all the rules of appropriateness this should be the street of Hephaistos. In the gathering dusk, especially, this is an interesting place to wander through, for the forge fires in the dark little shops gleam brightly in the increasing darkness, while the busy hammers ply far into the evening. It is the tinkers’ chorus and the armorer’s song rolled into one. Here one buys the coffee-mills and the coffee-pots used in concocting the Turkish coffee peculiar to the East, and any visitor who learns to like coffee thus made will do well to secure both utensils, since the process is simple and the drink can easily be made at home. The coffee-pots themselves are little brass or copper dippers, of varying sizes; and the mills are cylinders of brass with arrangements for pulverizing the coffee beans to a fine powder. This powder, in the proportion of about a teaspoonful to a cup, is put into the dipper with an equal quantity of sugar. Boiling water is added, and the mixture set on the fire until it “boils up.” This is repeated three times before pouring off into cups, the coffee being vigorously stirred or beaten to a froth between the several boilings. At the end it is a thick and syrup-like liquid, astonishingly devoid of the insomnia-producing qualities commonly attributed to coffee by the makers of American “substitutes.” In any event the long-handled copper pots and the mills for grinding are quaint and interesting to possess. At the coffee-houses the practice is generally to bring the coffee on in its little individual pot, to be poured out by the patron himself. It is always accompanied by a huge glass of rather dubious drinking water and often by a bit of loukoumi, which the Greek esteems as furnishing a thirst, or by a handful of salty pistachio nuts, equally efficacious for the same purpose. The consumption of coffee by the Greek nation is stupendous. Possibly it is harmful, too. But in any event it cheers without inebriating, and a drunken Greek is a rare sight indeed.
Walking homeward in the dusk of evening after a sunset on the Acropolis, one is sure to pass many out-of-door stoves set close to the entrances of humbler houses and stuffed with light wood which is blazing cheerily in preparation of the evening meal, the glow and the aromatic wood-smoke adding to the charm of the scene. Small shops, in the windows of which stand fresh-made bowls of giaourti (ya-oór-ti),